


one which you love (vormir)

by winter_boobear



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Endgame, Idk I was tired, It’s all stevebucky everything is stevebucky goodnight, It’s technically not Stevebucky, Sacrifice, Soul Stone, Vormir, bucky be sassin, buckys super done, but let’s be real it’s stevebucky, enjoy my sleep deprived and terribly angsty brain-child, just a lot of angst, my apologies in advance, red skull he’s still here ig, steve still being a self righteous little shit, til the end of the line and all that sappy stuff, wrote it after endgame at like 2 am, yall told me to post so here it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 10:43:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19828492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_boobear/pseuds/winter_boobear
Summary: Bucky and Steve on a mission to Vormir, you know how it goes from there...





	one which you love (vormir)

“Welcome, Steven, son of Joseph. James, son of George. Neither time nor fate has been kind to you two.” 

The red skull appeared in a plume of black smoke, the tendrils of his black cloak exposing his aged features. 

At the first sound uttered, Steve instinctively reached behind him and grabbed his shield at the same time Bucky drew his gun. They both were poised to kill, but were shocked still by the figure before them. 

“Schmidt? You- I thought you were dead,” Steve said while slowly shaking his head in disbelief.

Bucky snuck a smirk at his confused best friend while keeping his eyes and gun trained on the red skull. “Yea, well, you thought that about me too, pal.”

The red skull floated forward and opened his arms. “The power of the soul stone took everything from me, Captain. Now, it must take everything from one of you.” 

Steve narrowed his eyes and tightened his grip on his shield, taking a tentative step forward in front of Bucky. “And what exactly does that mean, Schmidt?”

The hooded figure stepped back to reveal a rocky vista overlooking a steep ledge, bulging purple clouds rolling on the horizon. 

“What you seek lies before you. As does what you fear.” The red skull enunciated. 

Bucky tilted his head up and lowered the tip of his gun as he straightened and took a step forward. He was losing patience, and Steve could sense it. 

“Alright, Red, enough with the dramatics,” Bucky said, “Just tell us what we gotta do to get this damn stone and we’ll be outta here.” 

“The soul stone exacts a terrible price on all who seek it, James. I’m afraid it will not be easy. You see, the stone requires a soul for a soul. One of you will not be leaving Vormir this night.” 

Bucky’s eyes widened and his arm lowered. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Steve straighten quickly. Both men were taking in the warning, processing what it meant. What it meant for one of them, specifically. 

Steve’s voice raised with hope. “So why don’t we just come back with something else? Anything else? You said a soul for a-”

“It is not that simple, Captain. It must be one which you love. That is the ultimate sacrifice to be made,” the red skull said without emotion.

Steve’s shoulders slumped with despair. Bucky could hear the edge of his shield _clink! _as it hit the rocks beneath them.__

____

__

Steve turned around and stared at the ground, grasping the buckle of his leather belt as his mind raced with ways to get out of this jam. He couldn’t punch his way out, that was for sure. He couldn’t use another soul, not even Schmidt’s. “ _One which you love _,” Steve whispered to himself as he closed his eyes, desperately wracking his brain for some solution, any solution. Anything other than what was right in front of him.__

____

__

If it had been as simple as sacrificing himself to get the stone back to his team, Steve would have jumped in a heartbeat. But this? 

After Steve turned around, Bucky could tell he was thinking hard. Best not to interrupt, as he had learned throughout the years. He felt his boots thump hard against the stones below his feet as he took slow steps forward, toward something over the edge that was drawing him nearer and nearer. Bucky stopped at the ledge, the tip of his combat boots touching nothing but stagnant air. 

He found himself staring down into the abyss, his clear blue eyes adjusting to the darkness so he could see the jagged rocks looming hundreds of feet below him. 

“ _One which you love _.” Bucky whispered to himself as he glanced down at his left hand, still gripping the metal of his gun. He dropped it on the ground, drawing Steve’s eyes to the sound.__

____

____

Steve walked towards Bucky, his thoughts successfully replaced. He could see the tired lines etched into his best friend’s face. Steve knew this man better than he knew himself, even with the, well, modifications. They used to hold conversations just with a flick upward of an eyebrow or a curl of a lip. He could tell what was going through Bucky’s raw mind. 

“Hey.” Steve said gently as he came to Bucky’s side and placed his hand on the small of Bucky’s back, Bucky still avoiding his eyes. “I know what you’re thinking, Buck, and I don’t like it.”

Bucky let a small, bitter laugh rise to his lips. He paused. “You know, Stevie, I thought going to space together would be a lot more fun.”

Despite the desperate scene before him, Steve couldn’t help but let a loud chuckle escape him as a smile settled on his face. It faded quickly, however, as he saw Bucky glance down at the chasm again.

Steve looked down and saw Bucky’s right fingers running over the lines in his metal hand. His electric blue eyes rested on Bucky’s face, the dark eyelashes hidden under his knit brows. 

“Buck-“ Steve raised his hand to place it on his best friend’s shoulder, but Bucky shifted a step away as he spoke just above a whisper.

“It was always meant to be me, Steve.” 

Bucky wouldn’t meet his friend’s eyes. 

“Hey.” Steve turned toward Bucky and squared his shoulders, forcing his friend to face him. The same old fighting stance never changed, even if the battles did. “We will find another way, alright? Remember back in the old days? Whenever we were in a scrap we always found our way out of it. But we always did it together. And that’s what we gotta do here. Ya hear me?” 

Steve set his jaw and stared into the clear blue of his friend’s glistening eyes. He could feel pressure behind his own eyelids, but would not let himself break. Not here. 

Bucky raised his head to meet Steve’s gaze. “This isn’t like the old days, pal. This is right here, right now. We can’t find a back alley out of this fight, Steve. Let me do this. Let me...”

Steve tightened his muscles and tilted his head to the side, daring Bucky to finish his sentence. 

“Let me protect you one last time. Please.” Bucky’s large, stormy eyes searched Steve’s face for any sign, any semblance, of a crack. But all he found was resolve. 

“No, Buck. You know I can’t do that.” Steve’s blue eyes were dangerously close to filling. 

Bucky turned to face the golden horizon and sighed. “I know you can’t.”

Bucky’s left arm moved out of Steve’s view as the metal twisted into a fist. 

At the same time Bucky compelled his arm to stab out at Steve’s hands, Steve could feel the tension in his friend’s body rise. Steve quickly reached out behind him for his shield, but Bucky’s hand caught his wrist in midair. As Steve raised his other hand to Bucky’s metal arm, Bucky brought his right hand to grab Steve’s other wrist, leaving Steve with his arms raised and legs exposed. 

Bucky kicked at Steve’s legs and brought the captain down to his knees, still in shock at being attacked by his best friend. Steve craned his neck to look at Bucky, who was closing his eyes. 

Bucky’s eyes shut tight, he didn’t want to see his own hands hurting his best friend. He breathed out a heavy sigh. The world needed Steve Rogers. The only person who needed Bucky Barnes is the one person Bucky needed to sacrifice himself to save. And this was the only way he knew how to do it. 

With his eyes still closed tight, Bucky said through gritted teeth, “I haven’t been given a choice about my own fate for the last seven decades, Steve.” Bucky wrenched his eyes open and stared into his friend’s imploring face. Steve’s eyes were panicked and watering, his mouth still open from the surprise and force of Bucky’s attack.  
“Let me make this choice.”

Steve felt vulnerable with his arms raised and knees digging into the rocks, but he was not about to let his best friend beat him in a battle of strength or will. Steve Rogers was no loser, and he was certainly not a quitter. 

Steve clenched his jaw and tightened the muscles in his arms as he broke Bucky’s hold on his wrists. Steve swung a leg around him and swept it under Bucky’s boots, bringing the soldier’s back to the ground with a grunt and causing his right arm to twist under him. Before Bucky could catch a breath, Steve pinned his metal wrist to the ground and placed his knees on either side of Bucky’s torso, trapping Bucky beneath him.

Steve stared down at his best friend’s face framed with hair splayed on the ground, a slight trickle of red appearing from Bucky’s nose. 

Steve was trying to convince himself that they could get out of this as much he was trying to convince Bucky. 

“I am not going to watch you slip through my fingers again, Bucky. I’m not gonna watch that happen.”

Bucky’s eyebrows tilted up as he looked at Steve with sorrow. His right arm grasped something from the back of his belt behind him, and stilled. 

“Then don’t look.” 

Bucky whispered the words right before he jerked his right arm from under his body, grasping an electronic metal rod that made a crackling sound. Steve recognized the device as the same shocking tool Rumlow had electrocuted him with in an elevator the day he went on the run in 2014. 

Steve’s eyes widened and he moved away, but surprise allowed Bucky to move faster. With his jaw clenched and a tear dropping from his eye, Bucky drove the crackling end into Steve’s side, and used Steve’s leather utility belt to hold it in place as he stood up from the ground. 

Steve felt the force of the rod as it came closer to his side, and could hear it burn through his suit in a matter of seconds. He screamed as the electricity flowed through his torso and limbs, he could feel his own nerves going berserk and contorting his body. 

The blinding pain momentarily distracted and immobilized Steve, so he didn’t notice Bucky rising from the ground and bounding to the edge of the chasm. His eyes only adjusted once Bucky took a pained glance behind him.

Steve’s vision was narrowing and his head was splitting from the pain, yet he could clearly see the glisten of his best friend’s eyes as they stared at his own in sorrow. Bucky’s face was calm, and he let his shoulders rest. His left shoulder drooped more than his right as he let the full weight of the metal sink his side. 

Steve desperately grasped at the rod stuck by his side that crackled, but he couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t even hear his own screams anymore. All he could think about was getting the rod out so he could move, so he could run and stop Bucky from- 

_Let me make this choice _.__

____

____

The words echoed once in Steve’s head before he banished them with his own stubborn refusal _No not him not him not again I can’t watch him fall again dear god no- ___

____

____

All these thoughts wracked Steve’s worn mind in a single instant, but it was more than enough for Bucky. 

Bucky let his shoulders relax, the first time in a long time he was able to. He could feel his heels off of the edge. All it would take was a gust of wind or a stumble backwards, and it would be done. And Steve would be saved. And the world would be saved. And his would be over. 

And it was always supposed to end like this, wasn’t it? Bucky living or dying for Steve, whichever came first. The guilt he had carried for so long, the pain, could be erased right here and right now. All he had to do was let go, and let himself fall. 

Bucky gazed down at Steve, who let out a long yell as he wrenched the rod out of his belt and away from his side, and tossed it behind him. Steve was shaking violently as he tried desperately to get to his feet through the immense pain. Steve struggled to keep his eyes and mouth open but he mumbled, “Buck- Bucky...”

Steve wouldn’t hesitate- couldn’t afford to hesitate. Bucky couldn’t either. 

Bucky took one last look at his best friend, his beacon. As he took his left foot off of the ledge, Bucky let himself smile. This was all for Steve. And that made it worth it. 

“ _One which you love _.” Bucky repeated gently, almost to himself, as he took a step backwards and felt nothing more.__

____

____

The last thing Bucky Barnes saw was Steve Rogers shaking as he crawled over to the ledge, reaching out a dust-covered hand that would be a second too late. The last thing he heard was Steve screaming, “NO”. The last thing he felt was relief as his body fell from the edge, cascading through air and leaving all of his sorrows on the rocks above him. 

•••

Steve Rogers slumped to the ground as his outstretched fingers grasped air and nothing more.


End file.
